The present invention relates in general to a drug delivery system, and more particularly, to a unique tracking code associated with a medical device for use in drug delivery to a patient which enables the creation and retrieval of a data log relating the patient to the specific drug associated with the medical device and all patient and drug information/data stored in the system in association with the tracking code by the physician or other health care professional.
Manual dispensing of drugs from a hospital pharmacy for administration to a patient is a common practice in hospitals and other surgical facilities. Pharmacy departments generally fill syringes with drugs, the drugs being administered to the patient with the documenting of the drug handling process being performed in a retrospective manner using handwritten entries by the physician or other health care professional. The likelihood of human imperfection makes drug diversion, medication errors, errors of admission, medication contamination and inadvertent needle sticks a constant companion to drug administration. Additionally, the process is exacerbated by emergency situations which demand hurried setup and administration of drugs, with concurrently less time to pay attention to timely and accurate record keeping. In the end, there is generally no complete record regarding the history of the syringe from the time of being filled to the time of its disposal or return to the pharmacy.
Walker, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,651,775, assigned to the same assignee of the present application, which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a drug delivery and monitoring system whereby drugs are safely delivered to a patient, monitored in real time during delivery and crucial events are recorded during delivery to provide on-line information and details for an audit trail. The basic components of the drug delivery and monitoring system include a scanning module, a syringe label cradle, a cassette tray and a drug injection port. The syringe label cradle is designed as a holder and positioner for a drug containing syringe. The syringe label cradle is constructed in a plurality of sizes to accommodate varying sizes of syringes to provide a constant needle height of the combined unit independent of the syringe volume, i.e., syringe barrel diameter. The syringe is positioned within the cradle and preferably securely affixed thereto by a self adhesive, preprinted label. The label provides drug identification indicia and drug preparation information such as drug dosage and concentration which can be in the form of human and/or machine readable indicia such as bar code and the like. The information on the label is automatically read into the system from the label using, for example, an optical bar code scanning module.
A plurality of syringe label cradle units, i.e., combination syringe label cradle and syringe, are placed within a cassette tray for transport and storage prior to, during and after use. Generally, the cassette tray is organized to hold the syringe label cradles and drug loaded syringe in a logically progressive array. In use, the cassette tray is aligned with the injection port which is most commonly connected to a patient-connected needleless IV injection set. The scanning module incorporates bar code or other digital indicia scanners to read the labels affixed to the syringe label cradle. Information contained on the label is in the nature of a code identifying, for example, the drug contained in an associated syringe, size of the syringe, syringe type, preparer of the drug and any expiration date associated with the drug. The scanning module also is used to monitor the syringe plunger movement as the drug is administered, thus acquiring drug administration dynamics in real-time, i.e., determining delivery rate and volume of administered drugs.
There is the desirability for further improvements in a drug administration system which provides a variety of medical devices, e.g., preloaded syringes and IV ports, with machine readable and/or human readable coded information enabling the tracking and accurate recording of the event history of the medical device, e.g., in the case of a syringe from the time of being filled to the time of its disposal or return to the pharmacy.